A spokesman for Barcelona’s St Pau hospital, Abraham del Moral, confirmed her death early on Saturday. The singer had a stroke in 2012 and had been admitted last month for a gall bladder problem, according to Spanish media reports.

Montserrat Caballé - a life in pictures

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Caballé was born into a working class family in Barcelona. Her musical talents became apparent early on – she was singing Bach cantatas at the age of seven.

The singer achieved international acclaim in 1965 when she stepped in for another performer in the notoriously difficult role of Lucrezia Borgia in Donizetti’s opera in New York. Her debut went down in opera history as one of the greatest overnight successes and she went on to tour the world in a career that spanned half a century, starring in 90 opera roles and giving almost 4,000 performances.

The Guardian’s Martin Kettle once described Caballé as “the finest bel canto soprano of the post-[Maria] Callas age. For those who prize sheer beauty of sound and true legato singing, she has no peer since Rosa Ponselle in the 1920s.”

The semi-operatic Barcelona was first released in 1987 and featured at the Olympic Games in 1992, the year after Mercury died. It initially reached no 8 on the UK singles chart, making it one of the Queen singer’s biggest solo hits, before peaking at no 2 on its re-release to coincide with the Olympics.

In December 2015, Caballé was given a six-month suspended jail term and fined more than €250,000 (£180,000) for tax evasion.

She was placed under investigation in 2014, accused of channelling earnings through a company in Andorra when she lived in Barcelona and thus defrauding tax authorities of €500,000, which she subsequently paid.

Clive Barda has been photographing musicians, singers and stage performers for 43 years. To honour his extraordinary career, the Royal Opera House is showcasing some of his best photographs in a retrospective exhibition. Here, he picks some of his favourite images of musicians and tells us about them.